India’s 3G Auctions Reschedule to February

The third generation (3G) mobile services auction now will be held in February after being pushed back from their original date of Januarry-2010. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) of India, introduces a new schedule related to 3G and Broadband Wireless Acess (BWA) spectrum auctioning. The new process will begin from January 10 with DoT inviting formally inviting applications from interested players.

The 3G and BWA (Wimax) auction will take place around Feb 12 and go on till March 10 with the successful bidders paying the bid amount by that time. The new schedule introduces by DoT means almost a month long delay when compared to the earlier released itinerary. As per the earlier schedule, auction was supposed to start by January 14; after that the DoT will send the 3G spectrum auction policy to the Law Ministry for a final review.

Presently BSNL and MTNL are the only operators licensed to provide the next generations 3G Mobile services in India.